Vehicles are provided with air bags so as to protect, in case of collision, drivers and the other occupants in the vehicles. In regard to the activation of such air bags, techniques for appropriately controlling the air bags by determining whether the occupants are adults or children have been developed.
To determine whether the occupant seated on a seat equipped in a vehicle is an adult or a child, conventionally used is an occupant sensing apparatus in which an occupant load is determined with a load sensor arranged on one side of the seat and the occupant load is compared with a preset threshold value for occupant determination (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-1152).
The occupant sensing apparatus performs the occupant determination only when an absolute value of acceleration of the vehicle is equal to or smaller than a predetermined value so as to prevent erroneous determination caused by the weight shift of the occupant, which occurs at the time of cornering.